Food For Your Gay Thoughts

It’s only a theory, and as preposterous as it may sound, just indulge me here for a while, alright? Let me ramble on and see where this takes us.

Queerness is all about evolution.

It’s only a theory, and as preposterous as it may sound, just indulge me here for a while, alright? Let me ramble on and see where this takes us.

So, to set the premise for this argument, let me clarify what Evolution means to me. One: The changes that gradually occur over the years are not merely biological in nature; they’re intellectual and emotional as well. Two: The changes occur so that we can adapt as efficiently as possible to an environment that never remains the same.

Given these two facts (or assumptions, for those who disagree), let’s get into why it’s considered natural for a man and a woman to pair up. Men and women are physically and mentally very different, obviously. Their respective strength, traits, and emotional sensitivity, I dare say, are almost polar opposites. Men, being physically stronger and faster, were suited more for hunting and protecting. Women, being gentler and physically weaker, were more suited to the tasks of nurturing and caring. Since sinfully luxurious couches, merciful ACs, and miracle drugs are modern day inventions, suffice to say, our ancestors’ living conditions and quality of life were rather poor. And that might be putting it very mildly. They were forever battling it out, be it with forces of nature, or wild animals, or one another.

Now, the urge to survive is something that we’re all familiar with, right? It’s intrinsic to all of us, and it’s something that has remained constant over the years. Survival, back then, had more to do with overcoming the obstacles your physical environment threw at you than your internal state of being. And to do this, you had to have both sets of attributes: the one that was unique to men and the one that only women were blessed with. Ergo, driven by this need to survive, it seems only natural that a man and a woman would “hook up”, so to speak.

Over time, things have undoubtedly and inevitably changed. Yes, it’s true that we’re often at odds with each other even now (and maybe that will never change). But the reasons that make us scream bloody murder today are very different from the ones that made us rage ages ago. Life is cushier and safer than it has ever been, and is getting even more so. We have our medicines to ward off diseases, and homes to shelter us from nature’s wrath. We’ve learnt to domesticate the animals that are useful to us, and keep the wild ones at safe distance. Life is beautiful. Well, almost.

As our external environment gets more comfortable, our bodies are changing less drastically. We’re no longer looking for someone who can help us survive physically. That kind of survival is no longer a task. Maintaining an inner equilibrium and surviving in the environment our minds create for us have become our priorities. As we turn inwards and focus more on ourselves, we seek emotional and intellectual stimulation, and compatibility. With our minds evolving more rapidly than our bodies, the meaning that pleasure and companionship hold for us is undergoing a transformation. And this creates a desire in us to be with people who will get our grey matter firing.

The thing is, when you begin to worry less about being physically secure and focus more on being intellectually stimulated, you open up a range of possibilities when it comes to the person you can be with. This doesn’t mean that people of the opposite gender can’t be or aren’t intellectually stimulating. Or that straight people don’t look for intellectual stimulation. What I simply mean to say is that, when what you look for in a partner begins to change, you begin to give yourself the freedom to choose. And I think, that’s the precise moment when Queerness is born.

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About the author

Lady Jughead lives and writes in the city she loves and hates, Bombay. Without meaning to and harbouring mixed feelings about it (You’ll see the irony in just a bit), she’s forever wandering in the murkiness that exists between straight and gay, clear and clueless, butch and femme, cute and hot, and genius and insane. All of which leave her with a question that often occupies a significant portion of her cognitive capacity – is she Just Perfect or is she falling fast into the deep chasm of obscurity called Just Average?

Your culminating few lines perhaps speak to it the most – “What I simply mean to say is that, when what you look for in a partner begins to change, you begin to give yourself the freedom to choose. And I think, that’s the precise moment when Queerness is born.”

I am going to be slightly brutish here, so I hope we can still be friends 😀 What trips me in your reasoning is what you attribute to agency on our parts – Where you associate Queerness having evolved at some juncture from humans allowing themselves the freedom to choose given the need for survival at that hour. Truth be told – I should like what you say – It just means Queer folks are incredibly evolved superior human beings! Yay! But….choice is a tricky tricky term.

Also, Grey matter firing is one thing. However, I know many folks out there ( myself included ) who have been or are possessed by this bizarre caveman like need to procreate with their partners regardless of biological possibilities.

The long fight has always been to say “look ! – Queer people and straight people are alike in every which way. We are normal just like you. We want marriage, babies, divorce, in-laws, a home in the french riviera, insurance, love and the whole 9 yard sari. Why ? Because we are just like you.”

Somehow I feel that tipping the evolutionary scales in our Queer favour takes away from that fight 🙁

In no way am I saying that we want different things from straight people. I don’t think my post is about that at all. This was just an attempt to look at homosexuality through a different lens and get people chewing on some thoughts. There were quite a few things that tripped me up as well while I was writing this post. Why is homosexuality found in other species too? What drives us to have sex with a particular gender? What I was trying to pick apart was why there are more of us today than, say, 50 years ago? What brought about this change? The thing that made sense to me as an answer was the fact that the way we think – as individuals and as a society as a whole – has changed drastically. I wasn’t looking at choice as a stand-alone idea. I was looking at it in conjunction with evolution – in this case, the change in the way we think. And by that, I don’t just mean our perceptions of what we need to survive. I do strongly believe that our focus today is more on living fully than merely surviving.

On a different note, I also believe we are all fluid. What’s around us and the way we think is what perhaps pushes us to one side or the other. How would you explain straight men having sex with each other in prisons? Which also brings me to this other thought I’ve been toying with lately – maybe our choice of a partner and the people we choose to have sex with are not related at all.

@Lady Jughead: Interesting article. However I disagree with the idea presented in it. Actually, sexuality and queerness and not new concepts, although the names by which we call them may be fairly new. The fact is, that these concepts were present even in the timeline when, as mentioned in the article, men and women were merely fighting for their survival fighting against the external environment. The fact is that queerness was always present in a minority population, still is, and will always be present only in a smaller group of people compared to the whole human population. It has got nothing to do with intellectual stimulation.
Also, I don’t quite agree with the insinuation that intellectual stimulation is the basis of gay/straight relationships in the modern world. Lust has been the foundation of many successful relationships. 😉 And of course, so many other factors such as attraction, compatibility, chance etc., play an important role in a long term relationship.
Lastly, when we talk about sexuality, evolution, etc, I find it unfair to keep the animal kingdom out of the discussion altogether, since so much of our evolution owes its roots to one of the species in the animal world.
Having said all of the above, I liked your article since it made me think more about the topics closest to my heart at present – queerness and evolution. 🙂

I understand what you’re saying. Here’s a question for you: are our numbers increasingly proportionately with the population, or are more of us coming out today because of a change in the way we think? Also, how can we be sure how long homosexuality has been around? I never implied that intellectual stimulation is the only basis for relationships. However, like I’ve mentioned in my reply to QC, are our choice of partners and the people we choose to have sex with related at all? Maybe lust and a need for someone to be with are two different aspects of human nature.

I completely agree with your point on the animal kingdom. It was one of the things I couldn’t explain in this theory. What makes animals homosexuals? Any thoughts on that one?

“Are our numbers increasingly proportionately with the population, or are more of us coming out today because of a change in the way we think?” I thought the post was about queerness and evolution, not coming out. I consider queerness and coming out as two completely different things. One can be queer, without ever coming out. So the reason you see more queer people today does not mean that there really are more queer people. It just means they are letting you know that they are queer. I won’t call this change – evolution, its a shift in societal attitude, nothing to do human/animal evolution. Also, there are enough regions in the world where coming out can get you hanged publicly and that societal attitude hasn’t changed at all. But I am sure those regions (e.g.. Iran) have the same percentage of queer people as US or Canada.

How can we be sure how long homosexuality has been around? Frankly, I have no proof. But let me ask you a question. How can we be sure that homosexuality has NOT been around for as long as heterosexuality? Considering homosexuality is just a variant of sexuality (in the same way as heterosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality), I find it easier to believe that homo sapiens have been homosexuals for a long long time, than to disbelieve it.

Are our choice of partners and people we have sex with related? Our partner in a conventional role would/should be the one whom we ALSO have sex with. As far as having sex with people other than our partners, it affects everyone, regardless of a person’s sexuality. I completely agree with you in this case. I have come across people with whom I can jump in the sack without any hesitation, but wouldn’t want to share my life with. By the way, this behavior has also been there since time immemorial in humans/animals. But I completely agree with you that lust and companionship are different.

What makes animals homosexual? Now isn’t that a million dollar question! Actually, considering the stakes, make it a billion! No one has been able to find the definite/exact reason for homosexuality or any sexual variation for that matter, be it in animals or humans (I believe the answer might be mostly be the same for both of the species). One way to try to answer this is by using the Darwanian evolution model – there has to be some evolutionary advantage to homosexuality, or else, it would have become extinct. Some studies have shown that there certainly are some evolutionary advantages to homosexuality although I am not sure if they are conclusive.

Anyway, I would like to point out one last thing. This shift in certain regions regarding “acceptance/tolerance of homosexuality” is not even cultural evolution in my understanding. Records have shown that till some centuries back, homosexuality was accepted and even celebrated in some cultures. Kama Sutra, Khajuraho temples and many more in Indian context. Greek, Roman cultures were accepting of homosexuality too. I am sure there were other cultures during that time which did not frown upon homosexuality. So actually, in the past few centuries, somehow we receded in terms of acceptance of sexualities, and are probably now coming around to accepting it once again.

I did not intend to write an entire answer sheet for a board exam, but looks like I just did! Thanks for such an interesting discussion! 🙂

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